Dear Destiny 2 Players: Just Stop P(l)aying

I’ll admit, I wasn’t a fan of the original Destiny. I bought it launch weekend with my first shiny check from Target, and even with a 15% discount I still feel disappointed I wasted my money on it. But I can see why people would like it, and was even cautiously optimistic when the second game was announced, particularly when I heard it was coming to PC. As time went on though, it became clear there were some problems with the game. My first warning signs being when a couple of friends of mine who were super into the first one – and were so hyped for Destiny 2 that they sent out completely serious warnings that they planned to disappear from playing other games for a few weeks – were done with the game within a week. To the point they didn’t even bother with the DLC when it came out.

Destiny 2 has had its fair share of lootbox shenanigans, but has mostly flown under the radar. Changing the loot system to a lootbox (sorry, “Bright Engrams”) based economy, and changing Shaders from permanent unlockables to one use consumables raised red flags for many at launch, and time has not proven those feelings wrong. From outright lying to players about their experience gain to further diluting the loot(box) pool with the Curse of Osiris DLC, Activision and Bungie’s greed has been clearly on display the whole while. While not as nakedly, brazenly avaricious as EA with Battlefront II, Destiny 2’s system is in many ways just as harmful. Particularly now with the new winter DLC “The Dawning” not just adding new cosmetic and gameplay changing items to the game, and not only locking them behind lootboxes…but unlike practically every other seasonal lootbox out there does not replace normal lootbox drops from quests and gameplay with them, instead making them almost mandatory store purchases if you want to get one without wanting to tear your hair out.

“Really? I marketed for this?”

Many on the sub-Reddit are annoyed by this event and burned out by the things the game’s companies have tried to pull already. The question I must ask is…why continue? The devs show you nothing but contempt, you’re clearly unhappy withe taste of the game, so why continue to invest yourself in it? Is it just because you’ve already invested so much time and money into the game it feels like you shouldn’t let it go? If so, read this. It’s just not worth it, and it doesn’t make any sense. Do you feel you can change the game by making your feelings known? I sympathize, but does Bungie’s (much less Activision’s) level of transparency and community engagement really lead you to expect your voice will matter in the long term? The best thing you can do to make yourself heard is vote with your wallet and time: Stop playing, stop paying, and just move on from Destiny 2. If the game’s player numbers (and profits) plummet they may even get the point and fix it. But as long as you’re still stuck in the loop (and this goes for any game), nothing will change.

So…you’re saying you have never even played the game? Rynjin If I see your name on any future articles I will simply not read them. Instead of jumping on the hate train…maybe you should play the game and form your own opinion. What made you think you were qualified to write this?

Because it’s not something that requires playing the game. Dishonest business practices are universal. More to the point, this was directed at people on the subreddit and elsewhere who are complaining constantly about the current state of the game. It’s a simple concept: If you do not like a game, do not play it. Don’t stick around waiting for it to get better, stop playing and come back if it does.

You’d have a point if I was saying the game itself was bad, that would require me to have played it to make a solid judgment. I specifically shied away from making much mention of the game’s quality (except to say I’d heard the core gameplay was quite good) and focused on objective qualities that don’t need direct game experience to comment on (business practices and sources of backlash, primarily).

Apologies if you don’t like the article, but be clear on why it was written.

I loved Destiny 1… but D2 is a hot mess. I “might” be good if they can fix some of the glaring issues with lack of endgame and crucible balance. Ive actually ourchased the dlcs, and after the release of Osiris, I have stopped playing for now.

I hope Bungie can bail the water out of this ship though. I wont be spending money in the meantime.

Factual Innacuracies:
– the Dawning is not DLC
– the loot system is not based around Bright Engrams (as they offer only cosmetic items)
– none of the Dawning items that come from the Holiday Engrams are “gameplay changing”.

Comments on your other comments:
– you can get three of the Holiday Engrams (one per character) per day for a quest that takes MAYBE 20 minutes if youre slow.
– just playing the game casually, you get at least 9 Bright Engrams/week. I dont do the Raid or Nightfall (lack of concentrated time), and RARELY do the Crucible milestones. Just doing the -other- milestones weekly on each character, ive been getting 12-15 Bright Engrams every week. So many that ive had to delete/break down the stuff i get to make room in my inventory, have been able to buy the things that pop up in Eververse that i want for Bright Dust, and still have 4000+ Bright Dust.
– people are over-blowing how much of an issue Bright Engrams are.

Now, ill agree that the loot system is a little opaque after you hit the Power soft cap, but it is not tied in any way to Bright Engrams. Nor will i make excuses for Bungie hiding the EXP required to level or artificially truncating it, or the other non-transparent shit going on (like what the consumables actually DO for you), but they, again,,have NOTHING to do with the microtransactions. Literally nothing.

Curse of Osiris is also a bit short (even taking into account the World Quest opening up only as you complete the Prophecies of Osiris items).

I personally dont approve of Microtransactions, and dont buy them, but people are going WAY overboard about it D2. Every story i see is riddled with innacuracies (like this one) and fails to mention you can quite,literally get everything they offer in gamemthrough playing. Fairly easily, even.

I don’t think you understand basic economics. You can make a really fine game and sell it for a fair price and let people play it on their computers and make some money.

But if you want to make a massive online game that eveloves you need people and hardware and they cost money. An ongoing cost. I think figuring out ways for players to want to but things like shaders that have nothing to do with the actual game play is great. You want something that is fancy and non-functional you can buy it. If you just want to play the game with your friends you can.

It’s a business. If you want to play and pay you can. If you don’t want to play you don’t have to.

I find the idea of writing an article suggesting that people shouldn’t play because you don’t like the game laughable.

Apologies for some of these. I thought The Dawning was a free DLC, but it’s probably more accurate to just call it a “holiday event patch”.

Re: Gameplay changing Dawning items, I know at least one Ghost Shell has a gameplay effect (it increases drop rates in public events). I assumed the armors were more than skins as well but I’ll admit perhaps I was wrong on that one. Again, better wording was probably required there.

Re: Bright Engrams only containing skins, this is correct but it’s also true of many games, and Destiny 1’s skins were all freely available as proper loot drops or purchasable in game, at least to the point I played. Cosmetics are still a part of the loot system.

Re: Getting everything in-game I agree with you there to an extent, but that’s something that mitigates lootbox shenanigans, not excuses it. Lootboxes are really easy to get in Overwatch too, but even though I feel that game handles it about as well as it could be handled, I don’t see any way the game is BETTER for the inclusion rather than simply allowing the purchase of the items using in-game or even real world currency directly. It’s better for the publisher, but never better for the consumer.

In any case, thank you for commenting. I agree this is not one of my best written articles (I should have used more time to elaborate and pull specific examples of what I meant), and I appreciate you picking it apart respectfully.